Book 5 - Page 145 (2/2)

“But you’d cleaned most of it up.” Out of the entire conversation thus far, that was the one thing that made sense.

“What I could. I dug into her past when Mr. Stanton became serious about their relations.h.i.+p. When I confronted her, she told me what I’m about to tell you—none of which is known to Mr. Stanton. I’d like to keep it that way. He was happy. Who she was didn’t affect him, so he doesn’t need to know.”

Whatever it was, Clancy had been swayed. Whether I would be, remained to be seen.

Clancy paused a moment. “You’ll get more out of the journals. I haven’t read them, but Lauren’s story is certainly more compelling than the dry facts I’ll give you.”

“I understand. Go ahead.”

“Lauren Kittrie was raised in a small town on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. Her family was poor. Her mother abandoned her and her twin sister with their father, who worked as a hand on a local ranch. He was a busy man, not much interested in or capable of raising two beautiful headstrong girls.”

Sitting back, I took a page from Eva’s book and tried to picture two teenage Monicas. The image was more than striking.

“As you can imagine,” he continued, “they got noticed. Toward the end of high school, they’d caught the attention of a group of wealthy college students from Austin. Punks, with a dangerous sense of ent.i.tlement. The leader was Jackson Tramell.”

I nodded. “She married him.”

“That was later,” he said flatly. “Lauren was savvy about men from the outset. She wanted out of the life her parents had, but she knew trouble when she saw it. She rebuffed him, many times. Her sister, Katherine, wasn’t as smart. She thought Tramell could be her ticket out.”

Unease caused me to sit back. “How much of this do I need to hear?”

“Against Lauren’s advice, Katherine went out with him. When she didn’t come home either that night or the next day, Lauren called the police. Katherine was discovered by a local farmer in his field, barely conscious thanks to a toxic combination of street drugs and alcohol. She’d been violently a.s.saulted. Although it wasn’t proven, it was suspected that multiple individuals were involved.”

“Jesus.”

“Katherine was in bad shape,” Clancy went on. “The hallucinogenic drugs in her system combined with the physical trauma of gang rape caused permanent brain damage. She needed round-the-clock care for an indefinite period of time, something their father couldn’t afford.”

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